Eat Pray Love

I saw the movie this week and I think it's a good theme for the past week. For a good life, actually - not just one year of finding yourself. Elizabeth Gilbert and Oprah has this belief in common, something I believe too. Oprah says: "If you want to accomplish the goals of your life, you have to begin with the spirit."

I am so with them on that.

As I said last week, I was struggling with the premarriage course, but decided to reserve judgement until the end. I was right - it turned out better than I thought. Here is the lowdown....

This is what I wrote after the first installment of the course: (putting it in red so you can feel the fury)

Eeeeeeeek. It was damn difficult to spend an entire weekend focusing on our relationship! It left me feeling like our relationship has been put under a huge magnifying glass and taken apart by strict-looking, purist scientists. Some of the discussions went like this: in some homes, people have different cloths for the floor and the dishes, whereas in other homes, people just clean up a mess on the floor with the closest dishcloth. Which one do you usually use and what do you expect your partner to do? Then filling in exercises about the rules (like aforementioned one) that your parents had in their home.
Pause, please.
Rules? RULES??? People have rules in their marriages? AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!

As you can see, I wasn't very positive. I also don't respond very well to structure (as I now know), so the rigid hours - starting at 9am sharp, having only 10 minute coffee breaks and about 3 seconds of lunch - did not go down well. But then a few things occurred to me. A few surprising, important things.

1.) We made two lovely friends on the course. It's another couple who loves blogging, computer games and wedding planning.  (please tick off 'making friends' for this week).
2.) Besides the dishcloth issue, we revealed some serious stuff about ourselves to each other. Necessary stuff, but in a safe environment. (When the dishcloth thing came up, we just gave each other a confused sideways glance: 'nearest cloth okay?' - 'totally')
3.)  The fact that the couples who were presenting doesn't have divorced parents, doesn't make them perfect or naive, it just means they have less trouble believing.
4.) Some of them actually have divorced parents.
5.) Every single couple in that room will be there to pray for us when we someday need it, and I'm sure we will, because most couples do.
6.) God and praying suddenly starts making a lot of sense when you realize that in fact no matter what we promise or do, we can't guarantee anything. We can only trust God.

I gathered some useful info from some of my married colleagues as well:
Maret: "We didn't do a course, we went to the dominee. He said that we must remember there are different things that make a woman and a man feel loved: Men want to know that you trust him with your life, that you respect his opinion. Women want to feel safe and loved. Remember that and you should be fine."

Saafia: "When I went to the molenaar before I got married for my 'coaching', I was very negative. I thought he was going to give me the whole obedient wife spin that muslim women have to know. But it was lovely. He said 'Saafia, don't worry. Just remember if you want to paint the house blue, you can't just paint it blue. You must discuss it with your husband first. And that's true for most of the rest, too.'"

So last night we cooked pasta for our new friends from the course (also made quick emergency trip to get pizza after fiance had an unfortunate run-in with the pasta), ate chocolate, drank wine, and thanked God that we have this wonderful life where we can eat, pray and love all in our very own home.

Amen!

PS: A picture of Oprah for you. Not that I think you don't know what she looks like. But guess what? This picture was taken at the cakemaker's. Oprah's had a cake made at our cakemaker!! AAAHHH! I share a cakemaker with OPRAH!!!! It is very, very cool. Very!!!!!! I must remember to ask Jackie (that's the wife of Charly from Charly's Bakery) the story behind it. Apologies to everyone who thinks this is very superficial. I am sorry, and I promise I did not know this when I chose the cakemaker (and would not choose a cakemaker on this basis), but I am v, v big fan and I .... AAAHHHHH!!!!! .... can't believe it.

  

Fearless - a sneak preview to the next post...

(Isn't she stunning? I love her story)

premarriage courses freak me out and I shouldn't design wedding dresses

Happy Movember! Fiance is growing his moustache and this is in support of him. Whoohoo!

Despite my happy introductory pic, I must admit this week has been quite a rollercoaster ride of emotions. Fiance and I started a premarriage course last weekend, and it has awakened all kinds of fears in me that I am struggling to deal with. However, I have decided to reserve judgement about the course and how I feel about the whole thing until it is finished, which is this weekend, so for now I am just doing a progress report with some pictures of my week...

Making friends: We have a new housemate! I shall call her Housemate 2 for now, until I have a better description. She came at a very opportune time - I was in the process of an emotional cookie-baking week. 



Decorating batch 1



Batch 2 before it went to the oven



The (very rickety, but well-loved) oven



Our lovely kitchen

 Running a marathon: Marathon? What marathon? What with all the cookies and emotions flying around, I haven't been doing much in the line of running. But yesterday I ran 7km, so at least I can't say I've done nothing. I also entered for my next 21km - to be run on 20 November in Stellenbosch. Yay for running! 


Planning a wedding: I have found the dress!!! Friends, I realize you might be confused, because Fifi was supposed to make my dress, right? Well, she did. And she did everything I asked her to do - everything! But the problem is, I am not a designer. Nor am I a dressmaker or awesome wedding planner that have lots of knowledge about fabric and things. My idea of a wedding dress (which she was probably questioning all along) was actually a bit... impractical. Very. So I paid Fifi her fee, took the dress home and then swiftly packed it in my basket of clothes that I won't use soon. Then I walked into a wedding dress shop and bought the only dress of all the hundreds of dresses that I've tried on the past few months that actually made me look twice. It fits well, it doesn't look like a cake instead of a dress, and it made me feel like I could walk down the aisle on my Daddy's arm tomorrow.     



There it is! Safely packed away in its bag, just waiting to be worn.

Learning something: One shouldn't think things through too much. Sometimes going on a gut feeling is enough. Fiance - like this dress - is my gut feeling. And that's what I'm going to hold onto while we do the second installment of the premarriage course this weekend.

a church, a wedding, God, a friend and two dogs.

I am sorry this is late!!! I am guilty as charged, I skipped my Sunday blogging. To my defense, work was crazy (and still is) BUT my loyal best girl fans gave me a kick in the behind and so here, finally, is the promised post. It is a little emotional, a little spiritual, and a lot of happy. Enjoy!

So I was going to write about a lot of stuff that happened the past week, like the fact that I hung out with the lovely artsgang (see pic).......

artsgang members 1 and 2 - the yoga instructor and the german one. These are the people who you MUST know if you ever visit our little town Mtunzini, in Zululand. they are lovely. These and two below are the people who I can read poems and stories with, and they are always producing new stuff. member 2 thought up the name 'artsgang' for us bunch of looneys.  



artsgang members 3 and 4. number 3 is philosophy professor (can you see it?) and his wife is v. cool. She writes and listens and studies psycology and makes best seafood paella I've ever tasted. They also have a grandhild who is the next Barbie. It's adorable!


...and the fact that fiance and I had a visit with the dads (yes, I have two and their dating. Have been for 16 years). I won't say much about them, besides that they live in Zululand and look at the room we slept in...




yes, that is the new SA flag. yes, those pillows are of the old SA flag. Ask no questions, hear no lies. All I'll say is that my dads have an interesting sense of humour.


I was even going to write that I had a hectic week at work and am thinking of stres management classes and all kinds of things. But then I got to my friend Lesley's wedding and I forgot everything.

So this post is dedicated to my fellow journalist friend and her lovely husband, Pieter. You may have noticed that I don't usually use names, but I've decided to use their names for this post because they are so open and honest about their story, and I think it can serve as food for thought for anyone. This is the part where I get a bit emotional and a bit spiritual...

I remember meeting Lesley that first day she walked into the newspaper office in Zululand and thinking: 'mmm... I don't know if we'll get along so well. She's way too churchy...'.
But then Lesley became a friend, and very soon her churchy-ness became a big comfort in a scary newspaper world. We shared chocolate muffins (I'm lying, we each ate our own!), wished Laurie (the other, fun journalist who didn't yet share our office) would come visit to input stories on the system (I don't think she ever got anything done when we were there, we just talked to her all the time), and we complained about deadlines and difficult sources to each other. Lesley  never made me feel like I should be going to church, or was bad for not going, or anything like that - and this is big, because it is not very hard to make me feel guilty. Whenever something bad happened, she would just say that she's praying over it. I didn't think much of it, but times weren't always easy for me and some days I found myself hoping that Lesley was praying. She seemed to be like my grandmother - one of those people with a direct line to God.

During that time a lot of hectic things happened at the paper. I saw a very nasty accident one day, one I couldn't really cope with. I had anxiety attacks, I felt nervous constantly, I couldn't cross a street without thinking that I might be run over or something. One morning the editor walked in to tell me Lesley was going to be late, because she'd been in an accident over the weekend. She had been on duty that weekend, and parking at yet another accident scene, a drunk driver passing the scene smashed into her little brown VW Beetle. Luckily, she was okay. (But Beetle was no more, and after that she had to drive some other fancy white thing).

A few times she invited me to church, once I even went. For some reason (and Lesley doesn't know this), I was fighting back tears in church that morning. Afterwards I just gushed about the chocolate cake they give after service to take attention away from the teary thing. But the thing is, standing there in church with her felt like I was eight years old again and in my grandmother's church. It felt good. Safe, happy and right - even though church and God still didn't make complete sense to me.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Lesley met Piet. She'd always been a bit of a head-in-the-clouds person, but now she became like a full on airy-fairy, a goner. Half the time you had to snap your fingers to get her back to reality. And she started learning Afrikaans. Her first word? 'Asemrowend'. It means 'you take my breath away.' Three guesses who said that to her! (well done, Piet!) 

About the same time, I took a break to do a course in Cape Town and ran into - which I didn't know at the time - the man who would be my fiance in the near future. Lesley and I started dreaming together. I told her I was crazy about him, she told me she and Piet went on a date. Then I moved and not long after - ping! Engaged! Both of us! Within a month or two from each other, we both promised our lives to these men.

As fiance and I drove through sugarcane farms to get to the venue this weekend, I basked in being home - Zululand. Smelling the sweet sugarcane and feeling the breeze, spending time with the dads, seeing Laurie the fun journalist.

Lesley did not take her eyes off Piet even once as she walked down the path to him. When she got there, she held his hands like she was holding on to life. The wedding car? A VW Beetle. And when it came time to say the vows (they wrote their own), the very English Lesley said hers to Piet in Afrikaans, while the very Afrikaans Piet said his to Lesley in English.

Me? I bawled my eyes out. Couldn't stop crying. At first I didn't really know why. Laurie the fun journalist said it's 'coz I was there from the very beginning, and someone else says it's because I'm getting married soon. But I've been to weddings before - lots of them. So this is where my own history came in a bit. I realized that Lesley and Piet, who have been so very dedicated to each other and who has not for one second pretended that they have the power to keep their own marriage together but that it is God who will keep it safe, has allowed me to believe in marriage again.

I got engaged in complete happiness, but it was mixed with a large element of surprise. My parents (as you might have noticed) are divorced. My friends's parents are divorced... I barely know a happily married couple and before my amazing fiance, who refused to stop believing in me or in love, came along, I was a bit doubtful whether I would ever get married. But Lesley and Piet, together with fiance's dedication, have shown me that it's okay to suspend your cynical side and believe in marriage. To let it be special, to let it be something meaningful instead of just something people do becuase everyone else is doing it. And to put everything into it.

So this weekend, fiance and I are starting a premarriage course at church, and after the wedding, we prayed for our marriage. I am still grappling with these things - I don't always agree on things they say in church and I once even mailed Lesley in a rage about a sermon - but I have found there is one thing that stays constant: the safety. God is a place, like Lesley and Piet, where it's okay to believe in love, in the fact that somewhere, someone is looking over you and your relationship, and to be okay with the fact that you don't know how to keep a marriage or relationship together, because God does know.

Filmmaker has been the drum I bounce everything off on morning walks and communal breakfast in our beautiful home. She is wonderful free soul, it seems, who despite having her own heartaches, still does not hold back in sharing my joy about getting married.

So, dear friends, I leave you with a pic of the happy couple, as well as a few lovely pics from the filmmaker who has been listening to all my laments each morning as we walk the neigbour's adorable dogs through beautiful Bo-Kaap and into the mountain.

congratulations!



ahh... bliss.

Dog and mountain pics by filmmaker at Butterfly Films.

Dirty dancing

 This week's entry is a picture post. Finally! you can all meet my lovely Filmmaker house mate and see what the view looks like from our awesome stoep (above). So let me talk you through it... but be prepared - it was one crazy week in my life, and it just got crazier as the weekend went on. Some clues: dinner party, dancing with wild abandon, a dressmaker called Fifi, a cakemaker covered in glitter and 21.1 kilometers. Am tired, wired and happy. Goals? I killed them! Hope you enjoy it :)

Friday night: the dinner party.

The Filmmaker! Doesn't she just look like a person you'd like to know? Here she is with a pot from her friend Auntie Patty. There is a pink ceramic cat in the kitchen window that's also from Auntie Pattie, whom I don't know at all but it seems she's got good taste in ceramic/pot-like stuff. 

 

 

Post dinner party: 'Coz I've had the time of my life... 

I've never felt like this before, I swear...

...and I owe it all to YOU! (fiance on other side of camera...)

  All I'll say is I take no responsibility for that which happens under influence of Johnny and Baby magic. After all, 'nobody puts Baby in the corner'!

 By Saturday, I was ready to take on the wedding planning. Stop 1: my dressmaker, Fifi. She is a Zimbabwean woman living in Woodstock. She took my measurements while her husband (clothed in robe) and kids (three beautiful girls - Patricia, Melinda and Gloria) were watching a comedy show in the same room. She says I should send you all a hello. So here it is! 

damn I'm sorry I can't get this pic turned around... 

 Next up cake shopping! From Fifi's I met up with fiance to go to the lovely Charly's Bakery I mentioned in an earlier post. Just look at their goodies... 

Meet Jacky, our cake maker. You can't see it on the pic, but her face is covered in glitter from all the cupcakes on the counter in front of her. 

Aim....

...and scan!!!

Third stop: registries. Enter fiance, the scan king:

Saturday night is when things got really interesting. You can put this part of the entry under 'learning things'. I kind of agreed to go to a two hour full moon dance class with live music while still under influence of Dirty Dancing awesomeness. While under these influences I did not consider what it was that I was letting myself into...
I don't have any pics to tell the tale, but the class was on Saturday night and they play all kinds of ethereal, deep music with drums and hums and things and you just have to move as your body feels like. Much to my disappointment, it's in a school hall and not under the open night sky as I imagined it to be and there is no-one teaching you any steps. You just have to feel the moves... 
Now I could go on to tell you how weird it was, but actually it was one of the most difficult things I had to do this week. I found that to let go and stop caring what other people think (also known as connecting with inner self/being hippy) is in fact not such an easy task, maybe one of my biggest challenges. I stood frozen while people around me flowed, rubbed, twirled and jumped. I was stuck in a big fat cringe.
I realized I had two choices: I could stay freaked out and be judgemental, which would leave me with an hour or two of torture ahead while everyone around me did their swirly moves, or I could get over myself and join in.
I joined in. In the last half an hour, I even found myself jumping up and down and holding hands with strange men. At the end I joined the group in giving thanks to my feet and the earth and the energies around us. I haven't done that since I was in varsity, when I was also into crystals and aromatherapy oils.
Now I must admit the dancing and letting go makes sense, a lot, but even towards the end when I was getting really into it, I kept wishing I was curled up in front of TV with very shallow Hollywood film (like Dirty Dancing), or that they would just stop with the hummy sounds and put Britney on already! (was also worried about the fact that I had to get up just after 5 the next morning for my promised half-marathon).
My final thoughts on the class are important, though: I think it was very necessary. On the way back, Filmmaker and I agreed that sometimes you have to revisit all the people you used to be to know who you are now. And now I know: I still think aromatherapy is useful and crystals can make you feel good, but my days of doing swirly moves was over even before it began. It's just not me.

Lesson of the week: let go, but be yourself. (I DO still like the full moon and I WILL dance like headless chicken on Dirty Dancing songs again, after all).

Then... the run! I leave you with a few pics to tell the tale:

people as crazy as me... who'd have thought there'd be so many?

ah, the bliss of fresh mountain air... 

As Marian Keys would say, Cheerios Amigos!!! 'til next week... 

Breakfast in bo-kaap!

Sent via my BlackBerry from Vodacom - let your email find you!

excitement/drama

That was the theme of the past week. It was so up and down, I need a grid by which I can explain it to you. I don't know WHY in the world I decided to move into a new house for some excitement, because between my wedding, my family and my work, I get enough of that.

Anyways, I will try to do this post through my progress report:

1. Planning a wedding: Does crying your eyes out because there are too many people you have to see that want to see you and thinking your boss hates you because you're always scatterbrained, stressed, underprepared or on your way somewhere, count as part of the planning? Well then I've been planning very hard.

2. Making friends: More like rediscovering existing friends - who are all LOVELY! My kitchen tea was this weekend! It was a tea party with cake, presents, lovely caffe-latte flavoured rooibos tea and one cousin that even drove halfway across the country just to be there. I just want to thank every single person involved for doing so much for me. Life may be crazy, but one thing is sure: I am blessed. See pictures.....



me, cousin (not the one who drove all the way, but she did do a whole lot of organizing), cousin's little girl and ouma in the back. Ouma is 84, doesn't she look great? And look at that smile!



me + good friends

more friends, good ones

some more good friends

3. Running a marathon: can I skip this part? No? Oh shit. Well fine then: I only ran once last week, it wasn't very far, today is Monday and on Sunday I'm supposed to run a 21km. I think I've said enough.


4. Learning something: If a filmmaker likes what she sees, she won't think twice about working right through the night to make the video.The result is one stunning video of my nightingale cousin, Zaria, and all I can say is wow... Let me explain.

I lied when I said I don't know why I moved into the house - I love my new house! I had quite a bad day on Tuesday. Was stressed at work, had a thousand things to do and then cousin had mini drama when her musician ex-boyfriend showed up at her house unexpectedly. So I told her to stop stressing and come spend the night at my house. Only to get there and find oh! it's the German's (one of the house mates) birthday party! And what a lovely bunch of friends he has. They are from all kinds of strange countries, one of which I've never heard of. Lots of wine was consumed, awesome food was eaten, and then Filmmaker appeared from her room (this is the third housemate, whom I haven't introduced properly yet, so keep reading).
Cousin Zaria got hold of guitar and her voice charmed it's way into everyone's hearts. As one of my colleagues accurately puts it: "she's just in her own little world there, you can see it. And if you listen, she takes you right along...". All the while fiance was chopping branches off at my second-floor bedroom window, because the bougainvilla tree has taken quite a fancy to my window and as a result the window can't open.
Filmmaker - us still being at the party downstairs - liked what she heard from Zaria's mouth, got a wave of inspiration and before we knew what we were doing, fiance was dragged away from cutting branches and ordered to rearrange lighting and electrical cables. Filmmaker appointed us makeup artist, creative director and props and lighting all in one. At one point, Filmmaker even had Zaria in an old fashioned bathtub and for that shot I 'stole' electrical cables and a candle from party below.
It was extremely fun, but most of all, very successful. At 4am the next morning (we finished the fiming at about midnight), while we were sleeping soundly, Filmmaker posted the video to Facebook. We are all in amazement. Personally, I just can't believe that someone has finally done my cousin's music justice. Yay!

So BIG thanks to Butterfly Films for this video - Enjoy!

Click here: ZARIA'S VIDEO